It is barely a month since EOSIO Dawn 3.0 was released and the community was over the moon about its features being top notch. However, the network has been working round the clock focusing on the stability as well as the cleanup of the EOS software. Moreover, most of the effort into the project has been focused towards a “proof of concept for inter-blockchain communication.”
EOSIO activity on GitHub has increased over the past one month with over 43 authors pushing 818 commits. Importantly, the software is among the top 8 active C++ projects on the website.
Introducing EOSIO 4.0:
Now is now Now
The developers have worked hard to bring the much-needed changes to the definition of the current time. The definition has been changed from “time of head block” to “time of current block”. These changes have helped solve problems when it comes to time-based operations and especially when missed blocks are considered. Besides, it also allows the measurement of elapsed-time within smart contracts.
RAM Allocation Model
The RAM allocation in EOSIO System Contract has been changed to utilize the Bancor algorithm. This was decided because after testing, the team discovered that allocating RAM to holders with staked tokens would result in shortages in future. It is also an improvement from the Dawn 3.0 system contract where one can only sell RAM at the price paid during purchase. The developers noticed that this would mean that in case of congestion, the users with more RAM – purchased at a cheaper cost, cannot free up space for others on the network. However, in the Dawn 4.0, the system has been developed in such a way that it buys the RAM and later sells the allocations at the current market prices. This way the system is able to balance demand and supply.
Rise of Inter-Blockchain-Communication
In the current EOSIO System Contract, the developers on the network have the opportunity to operate various chains that utilize a similar token for purchasing RAM as well as staking bandwidth. Producer elections, in this case, will be carried out on the main chain, whereas the related side-chains are set to be operated by the same set of producers.
Upgrade DPOS Last Irreversible Block Algorithm
The official announcement explains that “EOSIO’s IBC algorithm depends upon the DPOS LIB in order to be certain of finality. The costs associated with a LIB failure and the difficulty in fixing it are much higher once you introduce IBC.” In addition to that, the team has come up with “an elegant improvement to the LIB algorithm which guarantees that it is impossible for two nodes to reach a different LIB without more than ⅓ of them being byzantine. Furthermore, it is possible to detect byzantine behavior of a single peer.”
Exchange Integration Support
The release of EOSIO 1.0 is approaching, while a part of the community is concerned about their deposits/withdrawal confirmations on exchanges, the EOSIO team has already thought ahead by creating tutorials to guide the entire process. Besides, they have also developed a python script that monitors both withdrawals and deposits. The tutorial gives the exchanges all the guidance they need to start the integration with EOSIO based blockchains.
Other important features of the Dawn 4.0 include name squatting, header-only validation, light weight producer schedule change proofs, refined producer pay model and producer vote decay. The details of all these features can be found in the official Dawn 4.0 announcement.
It is essential to note that the work on EOSIO Dawn 4.0 code is in progress in the ‘slim, branch on GitHub. The team has announced that it is being polished and will be officially released on May 11, 2018. EOS software continues to make huge strides towards the release of a robust 1.0 in June this year. The team is confident that they will beat the deadline especially with the cleanup on Dawn 4.0 being completed successfully.
